Origen

“ Much rather are the stories of the Greeks not only very silly, but very impious inventions. For our narratives keep expressly in view the multitude of simpler believers, which was not done by those who invented the Grecian fables. ”

“ And who is there that, on reading of the dragon that lives in the Egyptian river, [3] and of the fishes which lurk in his scales, or of the excrement of Pharaoh which fills the mountains of Egypt, [4] is not led at once to inquire who he is that fills the Egyptian mountains with his stinking excrement, and what the Egyptian mountains are ”